[Mere reference to background art herein should not be construed as an admission that such art constitutes common general knowledge in relation to the invention.]
Redistributions of fluids between segments of the head and body are often of central clinical importance, particularly in humans. This includes redistributions of fluids between the intra-cellular and extra-cellular compartments within the segments. Measurement of these redistributions can be useful, particularly for monitoring and assessing the response and adaptation of the body to various orthostatic and anti-orthostatic dysfunctions.
However, currently employed methods of measuring redistributions of fluids between segments of a body are either invasive or bulky and expensive. For example, tracer dilution techniques involve invasively administering a dose of an appropriate tracer to the body, collecting blood samples, and measuring the tracer. The tracer fluid does not always safely disperse after the test. Alternatively, MRI technologies can be used but MRI equipment is both costly and bulky, making, it impractical readily to measure redistributions of fluids between segments of a body. A further disadvantage of these techniques is that they do not yield easily used real-time data during physiological stress or clinical diagnosis. Nor are there auto-regulation or homoeostatic balance ranges that can be applied generally to both adults and infants. An elderly adult, mature adult, young adult, child, infant (male or female) may have different ranges of auto-regulation.
The amount of “water” that a cell takes on in the brain is of critical, importance in brain injury management as is the cardiovascular competence level of the heart/lung/body.
The individual should be able to maintain body “homeostasis”—when the person cannot “Auto-regulate” then he/she has exceeded reasonable physiologic capacity.